Before we begin, a word of warning: This game is not for the
faint of heart. I have been a fan of the horror genre all my life, read many
books, watched tons of films, but none managed to pull my fear strings as hard
as Alien: Isolation.
So with that out of the way, let me tell you why this review
is different compared to all the reviews I have done before. I wrote fragments
of my impressions and thoughts on a notepad as a played through the game and
used them as the basis of my review. It breathes more life into the review in a
sense. Hope everyone finds it interesting!
This game, Alien: Isolation, is based on the late 70’s cult
classic sci-fi horror flick: Alien. There have been numerous games based on the
franchise, but only by name, which is pretty much the case for all movie
licensed games sadly. However, Isolation is a different beast entirely. Where
previous Alien games used the license just as a name to cover a lackluster
game, this however is the most faithful recreation of the Alien universe or any
film to game for that matter. It flawlessly manages to capture the very essence
of the Alien franchise while harnessing the power of this interactive medium to
further suck you into Ridley Scott’s sci-fi nightmare beyond the proficiency of
films.
You play as Amanda Ripley, the descendant of Ellen Ripley.
Amanda has been working for a mega corporation called Weyland-Yutani for a
while now. Her main purpose for working with them was because the corporation
had ties with the disappearance of her mother some 15 years ago. She finally gets
a break which hopefully will shed some light to the answers she is looking for.
Gameplay
When it comes to gameplay, there is just one important thing
the game emphasis more than anything else: is to Survive. All the impressive
sound and visual design aren't just there for the sake of immersion, finally,
they actually serve as very important gameplay systems. You need to keep your
senses in full capacity because of the all the different kinds of dangers that
are lurking all around the space station. Because of the desperate situation,
many of the people over there who managed to keep themselves alive formed
various groups in order to work together and try to survive. Unfortunately,
that means they tend to keep it to themselves and will consider anyone outside
of their group hostile, like yourself. It is suicide to go head to head against
them if they outnumber you, so you need to carefully plan out what you are
going to do. Will you take them on all by yourself? Will you try to sneak past
them with the help of your gadgets and wits? Or will you take the help of the
Alien by throwing a noise bomb which as expected emits a lot of noise for the
Alien to swoop down from above and kill everything in the vicinity. You can also
manipulate the machines in the station to give you an edge by hacking into the
systems. The hacking mini-games are fun very well grounded to the world design
around you.
Then there are creepy androids or better known as Working
Joe. They are basically a very simple version of synthetic humans in the Alien
universe. Now, you never can trust robots no matter how friendly they appear to
be at first, the same rule applies here. Some of the Joes are malfunctioning
which is causing them to savagely kill any human that is not obeying the
exaggerated rules planted into their head. What is even worse, they robots
don’t go down easily and can take some serious punishment before it kneels over
and dies with the same hollow look as if nothing happened. Yes, the Joes are
perhaps the creepiest thing you will encounter in the game, more so than the
Alien I felt. Something about their dead emotions, their stern attitude and the
way they look at you with those dead eyes and talk in equally empty voice is
very unsettling!
Going further up the top of the food chain we have, the
Alien: it is unbeatable, unkillable and once it sees you there is a very good
chance you are dead. So it is very important to make sure such a situation
never even happens in the first place. In order to do that, you need to stay
hidden as much as you can. Ripley is an engineer and just like her mom, a true
survivor who can make the best out of the given situations. She can hide in
lockers; hack terminals to alter some of the security systems around the space
station to make new escape routes; use her extensive engineering skills to
craft tools and gadgets like flash bang, Molotov cocktail, etc. to give her a
better fighting chance and make it through. Despite all this help, it does not
make your time any easier with the Alien lurking about, because the thing
is…you are never safely hidden. For example when hiding inside the locker, the
Alien can sniff you out at times. You quickly then need to it react by holding
your breath and lean back for a few seconds – you can’t always do that though
as it slowly eats away your health. Early in the game you find a motion tracker
which gives you a small opportunity to sniff out danger few feet away from you.
As with all things, you are not completely safe with the motion tracker either.
It is one directional in accuracy; it interferes with the metal around you when
confined under closed spaces (where more than likely you will be going
regularly to hide). The Alien is a lot smarter and just all around better than
you. I know it sounds unfair and it is supposed to be. Moments where a giant
white light appears on the radar followed by a big thumping sound constantly
reminds you of its presence.
You are constantly being haunted most of the game by this
vicious, hideous, merciless creature. That is 20 hours of constant tension and
that is not even the only thing you need to worry about, the environment is
very unpredictable and changes in hostile ways as the story progresses. So take
a deep breath and hope you won’t break while you playing.
Save System
You need to pay close attention to your environments as much
as possible. Focus on scoping out escape routes and hideouts as you explore you
enter new rooms. The game encourages you to memorize some of the key codes that
unlock doors and such so that you can input them quickly. It only takes a few
seconds for all hell to break loose and trust me, it just does not feel right
when you get killed just because you lapsed concentration for a few seconds
there and teleported to the last save station. Save station? Does that mean the
game does not automatically save progress? Yes and there is a good reason why –
As much as I can appreciate the simplicity of auto save system in modern games,
it takes away a great deal of care and thought process when you deal with
situations. That is because you always have the luxury of knowing that you will
be able to restart somewhere near your death; however, with the save station
system, there are long stretches when you have to play without the confidence
of knowing you can load back somewhere near. This system plays well with the
cautious approach the developer want the players to take.
Visual Presentation
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The presentation can be summarized in one word: outstanding!
The gorgeous lighting effects are some of the best I've seen and most
effectively utilized like a horror game should. The way lights reflect when you
point your flashlight around metal constructs like ventilation shafts, and
further reflects back and radiates by bouncing off the surrounding metal plates,
an effect called radiosity, is very
hard to pull off in video games. This further gets complicated very easily when
the surrounding surfaces where the light bounces off each other is made up of
different materials, as different materials absorb light in different ways thus
radiates differently. As you can you imagine, it is very computationally
expensive to calculate such variables and thus many game out there do their
best to fake this effect. However, the smart folks at Creative Assembly
wouldn’t settle for anything less than realistic. They managed to find ways to
achieve realistic light scattering and reflecting without bogging down hardware
using a very impressive engine they made in-house for the game. Where there is
light, there is shadow and the engine handles them dark regions of our world as
authentic as the lighting. With shadows realistically defuse and sharpen
depending on the source of light, distance of the object and the material it is
cast upon. The engine also uses a new form of texture compression that allows
the developers to add crazy amount of detail all over the world without
sacrificing any texture quality as well. The particle effects like the fires
and explosions take a massive leap forward as well. The first time I saw a
flame bursting out of the ground below made me fixated towards it for a few
seconds, it looks incredibly realistic! What is even more impressive is how
easily you can make this fantastic graphical showcase of a game to run with
very modest systems, an incredible technological achievement. If you want to
learn more about the impressive technology fueling the game, read this
article from AMD. All these graphical advancements are in full force to make
you believe that you are in an actual space station. The station is not just
made of pretty shiny metal, but it is complete with displays utilizing the CRT
monitors with bumpy mechanical keyboards scattered across the desks to the
punch card system which serves as a save point. When this technology and art
combine, it creates the perfect retro sci-fi vibe the game is going for.
Sound
According to science, even though visual memory is the most
prominent form of memory, it is the memory that is recorded through sound that
evokes the most powerful of emotions. So for a horror game, audio is incredibly
important, if not more than the visuals. Well then, lucky for us, Creative
Assembly completely nailed it here. This game has probably the most advanced
sound design I've heard in gaming. It is there not just to create the hollow
atmosphere, but it is probably the best tool at your disposal to survive. With
you being inside of an aluminum shell, every sound is more pronounced than it
normally is. The sound of thudding metal of something big and hulking by the
vents and ceiling right on top of you can be very scary, but at the same time
it gives you the opportunity to hear you're foes and make decisions: which is
to either fight or flee (just flee when the sound is too heavy!). Word of
massive caution though, Ripley is no soldier. She has not much experience with
fire arms and nor covering herself with armor. The game has a solid
ambiance-heavy soundtrack that feels very inaudible most of the time, but you
can still sense its presence. The rhythmic hum of the machines working away for
no one, Amanda’s silent breath as she clears a room to the radio garble by the
communication hubs, all which combine to create the best spooky soundtrack a
game can ever make. If you ever been holding
out for high quality headsets for a game to properly utilize it, wait no
further.
AI
One of the few drawbacks of this outstanding game is the
hostile human AI. Oddly, they feel more robotic in nature than the Working Joes
(synthetic human gone psycho). Their combat routines and walking patterns are
very simple in nature, so does the human allies which I think is even worse in
this regard. I think the issue is probably because CA was so much focused on
the AI of the Alien that they had to make some cuts in the human AIs. The good
thing is there are only very a few encounters with the humans in the game. The
human AI is not terrible by any means, it just that it sticks out like a white
paint on a black wall considering how well done the AI of Alien is. So how good
are we talking about? Very good. The Alien is a truly a living, breathing
hunter which reacts smartly to every situation happening around it, whether by
the hand of the player or the environment. The Alien seeks you out like the
expert human predator it is: It checks around every room, around corners,
vents, underneath the tables and it can even can hear the smallest of noise you
make or the scent out your location if you’re too near it. Clearly, a lot of
work has been gone through Alien and I am very happy with the results, CA made
the right decision here. The Alien is impressively detailed, it definitely is very
faithful recreation of the movies. I can’t stop thinking how realistically its
tail slivers across the floor, stuff of the nightmares I tell you!
Minor issues
Nothing is perfect, but Isolation comes closer than most
games out there. I had some issues with the game highlighting the interactive
elements of Sevastopol. Being a sci-fi ship, everything is littered with
lights, however only with few of them you can interact with obviously. The game
usually denotes the interactive parts with a bright shade of green. Now for the
most part it works just fine, however, there are times I can't tell how much I
lost time just for looking for a proper console to interact with. Upon pressing
the action button on every console in the room, I finally triggered the right
console. It turns out, this console was not green. Similarly I got stuck for
almost an hour figuring out where to go next, the answer appeared to be right
below me; it was hard to notice that because the green light was not very
noticeable. These visual cues sometimes made it annoying for me to figure what I
can interact with. Especially with a game like this when every second counts
and timing has to be precise. Also there is a small immersion breakers here and
there like nothing happens when you hit the environment with your wrench or
anything. Early on the game, I was cornered to a spot by some pissed off
Working Joes just because I tried to beat one of them with a wrench. I had no
ammunition or any sort of gadget, all I had was my wrench. I thought of breaking
some of the glasses on the tray near me to cause a distraction while I slip
pass them by the other side, sadly, my wrench completely goes through the
glasses. It could have opened up the game even more, oh well. There is finally
the awkward lip-sync during cut scenes, I feel it just does not feel natural as
the lip movement does not match to what the characters are speaking. Again,
there are very small and mostly nitpicking issues in otherwise a fantastic
game.
Conclusion:
It is amazing to think a lifelong RTS developer like
Creative Assembly managed to make a survival horror game in the truest of the
definition. At times it feels like Alien: Isolation takes the best elements of
Dead Space and Outlast and creates an awesome experience. But that would do
nothing but injustice to the game as a whole, it is stands out on its own. I would like to end by saying that I loved
every bit of my time at Sevastopol. I would love to return to it again
but…definitely not anytime soon!
P.S. I actually
documented my entire journey through Sevastopol by Twitch streaming and
recording the entire thing from start to finish, complete with my own
facecam(and scares). If you are interested, you can check it out from my YouTube playlist for the videos. You can also follow
me you on Twitch, I really focus
on interacting with the people more than playing games when I Twitch steam. I
would appreciate the company so join in!
